Deconstructing Cinema's "Sins"

The internet has many follies. Aside from being unregulated and promoting anonymous hatred, it encourages shock reactions to scandals that lack context. Additionally, it utilizes outrage and clickbait to remain SEO relevant. And if you don’t jump on something immediately, even if it’s senseless, you risk becoming irrelevant. In other words, the internet’s a place of immaturity and misinformation.

Confession: I used to watch CinemaSins regularly. I was young, naïve and thought that “film criticism” meant being edgy while deconstructing stuff. I also believed the channel’s critics were being unfair and obtuse in their criticism, and I defended Jeremy’s videos whenever they were brought up; after all, CinemaSins reminded people that they didn’t take anything seriously, so why criticize a joke channel? It didn’t make sense, none of it did.

About 5 years ago, I had a culture shock from someone I Follow on Twitter: bobvids. Bob was an ardent critic of CinemaSins, but it wasn’t until he made YouTube videos explaining why that it finally clicked: CinemaSins wasn’t about genuine love for the craft, but rather generating clicks for revenue. As this video showed, the channel was a brand:

See what I mean? (Courtesy of bobvids.)

Despite Bob releasing a follow-up video recently, I don’t want this to be solely about CinemaSins and why they’re bad. Plenty of more-informed individuals have already done that. Instead, I’d like to discuss the implications of nitpick-level film criticism mistaking the forest for the trees. Because while CinemaSins is the face of that, it didn’t create it. The problem’s been embedded in social media culture for over a decade and a half.

See, the internet loves hot-button outrage. It thrives on it, and so it appeals to the amygdala response of flight or fight. Outrage sells, after all, so why not capitalize on that? The SEO won’t generate itself, right? Right?!

This is where film comes in. Want to express disdain for something? Create a rant ripping movies apart. Want to tear into a movie’s problems? Waste X amount of time on it. Want to generate controversy? Pick a hot-button movie topic and watch the fireworks.

I’m not innocent here. Plenty of my Blog entries, especially the earlier ones, involve that. But while I deconstruct movies because, say, I don’t like them/like them as much as others, I try to acknowledge the good too. I strive for balance, essentially. It’s harder to do that well, but it pays off long-term.

I don’t see that with most internet film criticism. Like CinemaSins, it relies on cheap deconstruction or unoriginal sentiment to drive its point home. There’s no nuance present, which saddens me. It saddens me because it misses the point of film as an art-form, and it saddens me because it’s not healthy. But it also dissuades legitimate criticism, which gets lost in the noise. (It even leads me to write impassioned defences of Avatar and Frozen.)

I’m not happy with the state of internet film criticism. On one hand, there’s everything I’ve said above. But on the other hand, this bad-faith criticism has spilled into professional film criticism. In order to stay relevant, publications accept shock reviews about how “something popular is bad”, while editorials criticize a franchise for “ruining cinema”. It’s even impacted film aggregate sites, with dishonest reviews being accepted on sites like Rotten Tomatoes (which, by the way, the internet misunderstands anyway). Like, it’s one issue to criticize The MCU for its pro-military advertising, but it’s another to call its inherent popularity “bad” because of that. And that’s only one example.

This is why CinemaSins gets the rap it does. Apart from being lazy, dishonest and hypocritical, their presence has even bled into how films are made. Disney’s live-action remakes feel like responses to CinemaSins-style criticism, all while missing the point of what they’re based on. Let’s also not forget how people treat CinemaSins as legitimate, using them to “prove” non-existent issues. When the problem’s this prevalent, it’s worth addressing.

So how do we remedy it? It’s hard to pinpoint one solution. I, honestly, think bad-faith criticism like CinemaSins should be drowned out altogether, but that’s the internet’s modus operandi. Maybe we should be promoting alternatives by promoting content like CinemaWins instead? Or, if we need to be critical, we can balance that by addressing what the film in question does well? I can’t fix this issue permanently, but discussing alternatives is a start.

I get it: I’m coming off as “whiney” and “butt-hurt”. I fully own up to that, because it’s true. But my whining isn’t shameless defensiveness. It’s coming from love of the craft. I respect films for instilling values, even if not all of them are “healthy”. And it’s because of that that I’m hurt by the degradation in discourse.

I’ll end this with something personal: for the past two years I’ve taken workshops to become a better novelist. Aside from being eye-opening artistically, I’ve come to appreciate that there’s no one right way to discuss art. Every story has flaws, or “plot-holes”, even the great ones. But sometimes, for the sake of a better story, those have to be excused or ignored. Simply put, immersion’s more important than flaws. And the sooner we recognize that, the better.

Unless you’re CinemaSins, in which case you avoid accountability altogether.